From Resentment to Reconciliation
by Catalina3
Summary: There is someone new at Hogwarts entwined with the Potion Master's dark past. Can they help each other heal from the painful torture of their history?


Recollection.  
  
  
  
Severus Snape glanced at his hands. Mottled by the dim light of the torches placed high upon the dampened walls they looked decrepit and feeble. He felt decrepit and feeble. The age of thirty-seven looked like half a century on the potion master's lean features. Being a double agent was the most difficult task he'd ever been charged with and it was his very existence. Day in and day out, branded by the mark of an enemy, the desolate thoughts of what could have been swam feverishly in the depths of his brain, gasping for a teaspoon air to keep from drowning in the pit of what was. He sighed running a hand through his dark hair. Anything to deaden the unmerciful shouts of his unrelenting self conscience, the singular part of him so deeply rooted in fairness and consequence. To hate and be hated. To love and be loved. To balance the scale of those two similar extremes was the unreachable goal. His gaze flickered back down to his hands. The long elegant digits so many had been brutally mutilated and assassinated with. The clean scar in the shape of a crude arrow where a Muggle woman had clawed at his hands as he ravaged her body shimmered reminiscently in the dim illumination of his cold office. He shuddered, clenching his left fist tightly. Closing his eyes he took a slow rattling breath in efforts to clam his racing heart beat and nauseated stomach. Severus jumped slightly as a cautious voice spoke from behind him.  
  
"Severus?"  
  
He looked up and met the blue eyes of the man that was his solitary salvation and prolonged death.  
  
"Albus." He acknowledged with a small nod. "Can I help you?"  
  
"I was wondering the same." The old man whispered, looking over the rims of his gold spectacles into his tired black eyes.  
  
Snape sighed, pondering for a moment. "No, Albus. Not at the moment. Would you like a cup of tea?" An unfamiliar courtesy always struck him when he was in the powerful yet gracefully aged wizard's presence.  
  
"No thank you, Severus." He paused. "However, I do need to ask a favor of you."  
  
Severus inwardly sighed. "Yes?"  
  
Sensing his trepidation Dumbledoor added. "You may decline, of course."  
  
Waving his hand impatiently Snape urged him forward.  
  
"Severus, there is a new student to be inducted in to Slytherin. You were familiar with her parents."  
  
Severus held his breath for a moment, a deep sense of foreboding drenching his body. The people with whom he had been associated with were usually very unpleasant. "Who is she?"  
  
Dumbledoor cleared his throat. "Olivia Lestrange."  
  
Severus immediately tensed as the sound of the name graced his ears. Memories of the raven haired child tagging along with her mother and father to distant Death Eater meetings wracked his brain. Olivia Lestrange: child to exceptionally cunning, yet fallen Death Eaters Oliver and Constance Lestrange. He recalled her glossy black tresses that reached slightly past her bony shoulders and seemed to throw sunlight back in the air as a sign of malevolent defiance. He recollected her intense grey eyes that followed you suspiciously with calculating and ill disguised, yet disarmingly malicious mirth. He, too, remembered the grotesque brand of the Dark Lord upon her tiny, unblemished forearm. Severus' memory flew back to the night several children were given the mark as a twisted sort of orientation. The mark affectionately dubbed as the "adolescent indication". Severus bitterly thought of it as a sadistic type of first communion into the inner loop of Voldemort and the precursor to a dismal existence of dishonor and desolation. Oh, how he loathed Voldemort with all his being. His heart felt a sharp pang when he recalled all the innocent children tainted so foully, accumulated, but forgotten like the beat of heart against a rib.  
  
"Severus?"  
  
Dumbledore's voice was fuzzy and distant as it brought Severus out of his depressing reverie.  
  
Severus looked up, his clenched fist tense with underlying fury.  
  
Dumbledoor frowned slightly. "Severus, I regret bringing you to your past, but Olivia suffers the very same as you, because of it. She is bitter and angry at the world."  
  
"So, you expect me to help her?" Severus made a short noise of disgust at himself. "It's not my concern to try and play the part of councilor to an angsty child. For Merlin's sake Albus, I can't even help myself."  
  
"Perhaps you can help each other?"  
  
Snape paused in deafening silence as Dumbledoor turned from him and stepped out of his office. Severus followed with his intelligent gaze until the sound of the heavy door shutting with a sharp snap echoed throughout the still room.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N-  
  
Aha! There you have it! Chapter uno! Thank you for taking the time to read! I would like to take this opportunity to strongly apologize for the complete mauling of punctuation that has taken place during this expedition into writing. I am looking for someone who has mastered the technical skills of the English language to proofread for me. Anyone who is interested, please do not hesitate to contact me.  
  
( that_snape_stare@hotmail.com )  
  
Anyone who would like to beta for this story .that would be grand!  
  
If you review. I'll make you all cookies. W00t!  
  
Love,  
  
Catalina 


End file.
